Antim became the first Indian girl to win a medal at the world junior wrestling championship. | Photo Credit: FILE PHOTO

In August 2004, Ram Niwas Panghal and his wife Krishna Kumari were blessed with their fourth child. The couple, in the village of Bhagana in Haryana’s Hisar district, already had three daughters at that point. Their fourth child — another daughter — was named Antim. In English, it can be read as final/last. In 2004, it symbolised the desire not to have any more girl children.

Ram Niwas does not think too much about his choice of name for his fourth daughter more than 17 years ago, but there is a touch of irony to it in 2022. On August 19, Antim became the first Indian girl to win a gold medal at the Junior World Championships in the 34-year history of the competition.

Antim didn’t just win gold, she dominated the women’s 53kg field at Sofia, Bulgaria. She beat the European champion, Olivia Andrich, by technical superiority (11-0) and then pinned Japan’s Ayaka Kimura inside a minute. Ukraine’s Natalie Klivchutska only narrowly managed to wrestle the full six minutes with Antim but was outclassed all the same in an 11-2 defeat. In the final, she crushed Kazakhstan’s Altyn Shagayeva 8-0 to create history.

While it is seen as an archaic cultural belief, the desire for fewer girl children is strong in this part of Haryana. Hisar’s sex ratio is skewed at 872 females per 1,000 males. Ram Niwas readily admits to the reason for naming his daughter Antim.

“After three girls we wanted a boy. It’s the custom in our villages that if you have a lot of girls, you give them a name like Antim or Kaafi (enough) so that you don’t have any more. I’ve never really thought much about it,” he says. “It’s just a custom. If you have a lot of girls, it’s usually very hard to manage, especially if you aren’t very well off. There was a fear about how you would provide for their upbringing and how you would manage their wedding. At least, that was the thinking.”

While his choice of a name for his daughter might suggest a father indifferent to his daughters’ future, that’s far from the truth. “I owe everything to my parents,” Antim told  Sportstar a few weeks ago.

Indeed, while the family does not think too deeply about social naming customs which might be deemed regressive, their support for Antim has been critical for her to go from strength to strength.

Ram Niwas was the one who insisted Antim play a sport. Eldest daughter Sarita was a national level kabaddi player, and after a diploma course at the National Institute of Sports, she will start a job at Sports Authority of India in Bangalore. “I had been a kabaddi player so I hoped Antim would also play that game but it was Sarita who wanted Antim to become a wrestler. When Antim was 10 years old, she took Antim to the Mahavir Stadium in Hisar city where there was a wrestling programme,” recalls Ram Niwas.

Mother Krishna Kumari shares, “ Badi ladki ki zidd thi ki kushti khelegi (our eldest daughter was determined Antim should wrestle).”

While Ram Niwas willingly made the 20km journey with his two daughters from the village, he was uncertain about letting Antim wrestle. “There was a coach, Roshni Devi madam, who insisted Antim should wrestle. She said, ‘The girl is good, let her play.’ I had to think for four to five months about this. She kept insisting, kept sending messages. Pura dabav tha unse (she kept up the pressure). She said, ‘If you aren’t letting her play, then give her to me, I’ll raise her,” recalls Ram Niwas.

It wasn’t that Ram Niwas was against his daughter wrestling. His concern was that if Antim had to wrestle, there couldn’t be any half measures. “I was thinking if I’m going to put her in, I have to be serious. Bada decision jaldi nahi le sakte hain. Daalna hai toh accha karna hai warna dalna hi nahin (It was a big decision and we could not be hasty about it. She had to do well if we enrolled her, otherwise it was pointless). It has to be all or nothing. I can’t just put her in the academy and forget about her. Bistar sab le ke aana hai (I had to pack up everything and come here). So first I sent her and her eldest sister to Hisar and put them in a room on rent near Mahavir Stadium. There was someone who could cook and clean for her. Then, a month later, her mother also went there. The rest of my kids also joined them after six months. Finally, I also came here,” he says.

Plenty of hard decisions were made when Ram Niwas decided to shift his family from Bhagana to Hisar to support Antim’s wrestling career. The distance between their village and Hisar was barely 20km, but that did not make it any less challenging. 

After taking a house on rent, Ram Niwas realised he had to get a place of his own. “I also needed a place where I could keep my buffaloes and my family. So, finally I decided to build my own home outside Hisar. The buffaloes were non-negotiable. If my daughter had to wrestle, she had to get the best diet. I don’t trust the milk you get in cities,” says Ram Niwas, who keeps three buffaloes and a cow in the family’s house on the outskirts of Hisar city.

None of this has been cheap. Ram Niwas’ belief system that daughters will be expensive to raise has been true but not for the reasons he would have thought. And it’s a responsibility he has willingly taken. “I still haven’t sold most of my land. But I’ve sold almost everything else. I had a tempo truck, a few bikes. and a tractor. I had to sell those. It’s not cheap to raise a wrestler. Paise ki zarurat thi to kuch na kuch to karna padta hai (we needed money so we had to sell). I had to raise money somehow. At other times, I would borrow money from my friends,” he says.

In public, Ram Niwas would confidently dismiss arguments that he was spending too much on one daughter. Now, he admits that he had his worries. “ Ram ko pata hai, ek kisam ka jua khela hai (God knows, I was gambling),” he says. “I don’t know why I took that decision. I know I thought that she would make us proud one day,” he says.

Antim’s coaches though backed the move. They realised she was special. “She was talented from the start,” says Pradeep Sihag, who coached her from the time she first started training at Hisar’s Mahavir Stadium. “Her movement was always good. As she started getting serious, even the coaches liked working with her. Her catching power is quite good and she is very hard-working. She trains for four hours in the morning and four hours in the evening,” he says.

Propelled by natural talent and backed by her family, Antim has been a consistent performer since the junior age groups. She won the U-15 national title in 49kg in Patna in 2018 before winning the bronze medal in the U-15 Asian Wrestling Championship in Japan the same year. The next three years would see the Haryana wrestler winning the cadet U-17 national title at the sub-junior nationals in Cuttack in 2019, followed by a gold in the Cadet U-17 national title at Patna in 2020. This year she won a gold medal at the Junior Asian Championships followed by a silver a month later, against far older opponents, at the U-23 Asian Championships.

Her medals are roughly bundled in a locker. The most prominently displayed trophy is the cardboard cutout of a key to an electric scooter awarded after she won a dangal in Punjab. While her father would once drive her on his motorcyle from their home to her wrestling academy, she drives the shiny red two-wheeler now.

Antim is yet to turn 18, which means she still has another two years in which she can compete at the junior level. However, she’s already showing signs she’s ready for bigger stages and opponents several years older.

In May this year, she nearly pulled off a monumental upset. Antim led world bronze medallist Vinesh Phogat 3-0 with 15 seconds to go, before losing on criteria 3-3 at the selection trials for the Commonwealth Games. “She stunned Vinesh with how quick she was at the start of the match. It was just lack of mat experience that cost her,” admits coach Sihag. But that defeat would prove to be a catalysing moment. “Think of the quality that Vinesh is. She is an Asian Games champion and a world medallist. And on the other side is this 17-year-old girl. After she did kushti (wrestle) with Vinesh and came close to beating her, she got the confidence that she is ready to take on the best,” says Sihag.

Indeed, a month later, wrestling coach Jitender Singh asked Sihag if Antim wanted to take part in the Zouhaier Sghaier competition – a world ranking tournament – in Tunisia. There, Antim stunned a quality field. She beat Tokyo Olympics quarterfinalist Luisa Valverde, the 2022 Pan American champion, Dominique Parrish of the USA, and finally the 2022 Pan American champion in the 55kg category, Karla Godinez, in the final to win her first senior gold medal.

With results like this, it’s little wonder that Antim and her coaches probably found the junior world championships a degree easier. “Because she’s started competing and winning against seniors, the juniors is almost very easy for her,” says Sihag.

Antim has also inspired her brother, Arpit, the youngest of the siblings. Arpit also wrestles and is a Greco-Roman bronze medallist in the under-15 age category in Haryana. He got into wrestling because he wanted to emulate Antim. “I really like how aggressive she is. Her side attacks are very strong,” he says.  

Coach Sihag is excited about Antim’s growth. “You wait and see for another two years. She’s going to be very good. Everyone is going to know her name,” he says. And while that’s a name that isn’t the most flattering, Antim herself doesn’t mind. “I never thought too much about it or about changing it. Right now, it’s my pehchan, jaise kushti meri pehchan hai (it’s my identity, just like wrestling is my identity).”

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